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Thursday, 24 January 2013

The exquisite VALENTINO
show was a fitting end to the couture season; a joyous celebration of
the infinite possibilities of the unfettered imagination and of
craftsmanship that in this house sometimes borders on the
miraculous. “We really wanted to create a dream,” said Maria Grazia Chiuri during the fittings, “something really fantastic, magic, fairy tale. Couture is a dream, and we love to dream. Why not?”

Chiuri and her partner in design, Pierpaolo Piccioli, were
looking at the idea of formal and secret gardens, with mazes, ancient
mosaics, and romantic flower plantings. They conceived an idea of padded
rouleaux, scrolled into raised decorative patterns on the
surface of the fabric, to suggest the elaborate wrought-iron gates
hiding the mystery within. And true to the mysteries of haute couture,
they presented the design concept to the two Valentino ateliers (who
work in proud autonomy from each other) and each resolved it in a very
different way, even though to the eye the results are identical. “The
ritual of couture is to be secret!” said Piccioli. That effect was used
for prim little dresses (some with capelets) in ivory-on-ivory, and also
diaphanous fabrics. A magnificent tulle cape embroidered in this black
“ironwork” shadowed a ball dress elaborately embroidered with flowers
and birds a masterwork that rightly elicited a spontaneous round of
applause. Other innovative effects included lightly stamping bonded wool
with a design, often taken from the schemes in eighteenth-century
garden design books for formal parterres and flower beds, that
registered from afar like a subtle print.

The designers also
took many different laces and re-embroidered them to create shimmering
collage effects like a late Monet garden-scape (there were prints that
suggested this, too). Some of these dresses were as elaborate as Belle
Epoque lingerie, although their silhouettes remain austere, and the
designers leavened the heady brew with some dresses of unembellished,
monastic simplicity that let the line and cut speak for themselves.
Chiuri and Piccioli sent their fey girls out at breakneck speed so that
as the finale’s Madame Bovary crinolines and Watteau-backed ball
dresses brushed past scattered with chiffon dahlias, wrought with Sun
King–era motifs in silver thread, or latticed with ribbon-work they
seemed like so many exotic birds or flower fairies in flight. An
emotional Valentino rose to his feet to greet the designers (once his
assistants) as they took their curtain call, safe in the knowledge that
his legacy of giddily feminine romance and faultless technique is
blossoming in their hands.